The Communicative Mind
The Communicative Mind:
A Linguistic Exploration of Conceptual
Integration and Meaning Construction
By
Line Brandt
The Communicative Mind:
A Linguistic Exploration of Conceptual Integration and Meaning Construction,
by Line Brandt
This book first published 2013
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2013 by Line Brandt
Cover art by Line Brandt
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-4438-4144-7, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4144-3
Research in cognitive semantics has clearly demonstrated the
conceptual basis of linguistic meaning, most evident from the
crucial role of imaginative capacities, such as metaphor, blending,
the construction of mental spaces, and the evocation of myriad
entities of a fictive nature.
—Ron Langacker, 2001
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
Introductory Presentation and Initial Remarks on Cognitive Semiotics
as a Disciplinary Foundation for the Research Project
Brief Overview of Contents: A Reader’s Guide
Part I
Chapter One............................................................................................... 45
Enunciation: Aspects of Subjectivity in Meaning Construction
1.1 What is enunciation?
1.2 Enunciation and viewpoint
1.3 The enunciating subject
1.4 Embedded enunciation
1.5 Editorial subjectivity
1.6 Aspects of enunciation: A brief overview
1.7 Concluding remarks: Further comments on Figure 1-5
Part II
Chapter Two ............................................................................................ 115
The Subjective Conceptualizer: Non-actuality in Construal
2.1 A Semiotic Approach to Fictive Interaction as a Representational
Strategy in Communicative Meaning Construction
2.2 Subjectivity in the Act of Representing: The Case for Subjective
Motion and Change
Chapter Three .......................................................................................... 199
Conceptual Integration in Semiotic Meaning Construction
3.1 Mental Spaces and Meaning
3.1.1 Mental Spaces and Linguistic Meaning
3.1.2 A Cognitive-Semiotic Approach to Conceptual Integration:
Blending in Metaphor
3.1.3 The Gravedigging Metaphor
Table of Contents
viii
3.2 Conceptual Integration Typologies
3.2.1 The Applicability of Conceptual Integration Theory: A
Discussion
3.2.2 Conceptual integrations: A typology
Part III
Chapter Four............................................................................................ 425
Meaning Construction in Literary Text
4.1 Literary Studies in the Age of Cognitive Science
4.2 Cognitive Poetics from a Semiotic Perspective: A Stratified Model
for Reading and Interpretation
4.3 Explosive Integrations: Women, Fire, and Dangerous Liaisons
Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 541
Effects of Poetic Enunciation: Seven Types of Iconicity
5.1 The semiotic grounding of a poetic device
5.2 Phonetic iconicity
5.3 Iconicity in semantic construal at the sentence level
5.4 Linebreak iconicity
5.5 Performative iconicity
5.6 Rhythmic iconicity
5.7 Rhetorical iconicity
5.8 Graphic iconicity
5.9 Summary
Conclusions and Future Directions.......................................................... 595
Bibliography............................................................................................ 609
INTRODUCTION
Introductory presentation and initial remarks
on Cognitive Semiotics as a disciplinary foundation
for the research project
Cognitive Science & the Humanities
The subject of the present book is meaning construction and the
significance of enunciation for the structure and exchange of linguistic
signs.1 Based on interdisciplinary research in language and cognition, the
book embodies an implementation of a new scientific paradigm in the
cognitive sciences, namely the paradigm, emergent in the last couple of
decades, of human cognition as being fundamentally social. What traits of
the human mind make it possible for disparate human minds, with separate
physical brains, to communicate with each other, and through this capacity
bring our minds into alignment, enabling individuals to know the content
of each other’s thoughts – and even causally affect it? Bringing together a
wide range of theories, in a wide array of disciplines, my research shows
that language is shaped, at every structural level, by the fundamental
premise of face-to-face interaction. Language and cognition are inherently
structured so as to handle, not just co-presence or co-habitation, but the
interchange happening in basic social situations of someone (an
“enunciator”, a “speaker”) addressing someone else, in mutual awareness
and attention. This basic situation of address is what is known in
linguistics (cf. Benveniste) as “enunciation”. The Communicative Mind
presents an unusual and thoughtprovoking investigation into the
significance of enunciation for theories of language and mind within
disciplines in Cognitive Science (CS) devoted to advancing our
understanding of meaning-making processes in cognition. Viewed in sum,
the conclusions arrived at point toward the need for extensive revision of
certain paradigms in CS pertaining to meaning-making processes in
1
The Communicative Mind is based on my doctoral work (Brandt 2010:
“Language and Enunciation – A cognitive inquiry with special focus on conceptual
integration in semiotic meaning construction”, Aarhus University).
2
Introduction
cognition: If first- and second-generation cognitive science locate meaning
in truth conditions, on the one hand, and in the body and the unconscious
conceptual system, on the other, perhaps a third-generation cognitive
science will locate meaning in communicating minds and bodies. The
notion of a “communicative” mind thus betokens a heightened awareness
of the speech situation as a significant – and indeed constitutive – factor in
language.
My approach grows out of an interdisciplinary background in
Philosophy, Linguistics, English Language and Literature, Cognitive
Science and Cognitive Semiotics (developed in the 1990’s at the Center
for Semiotics at Aarhus University). Common to all endeavors has been an
interest in developing ways of approaching subjects in the Human
Sciences from a cognitive perspective, and thus furthering and contributing
to a meaningful integration of the cognitive sciences and the humanities.
The enterprise is naturally an interdisciplinary one, and the work
presented here is interdisciplinary at various different levels – both within
disciplines and across disciplines. An example of the latter is the
introduction of experimental psychology, gestalt psychology and
phenomenology into a line of argumentation addressing issues in a
particular theory in Cognitive Linguistics (CL). In Chapter 3, a theory of
time in human cognition developed by neuropsychologist E. Pöppel is
brought to bear on hypotheses in Conceptual Integration Theory (aka
Blending Theory). Building a bridge between neuroscience and
psychology, Pöppel’s research on temporal perception (cf. section
[3.2.1.3]: ‘Integration at different levels of consciousness’) presents a
constructive opportunity for assessing the hypothesis that numerical
identity, gestalted entities and whole narrative scenarios as well as a
variety of advanced conceptual activities are constructed by the same
cognitive mechanism, as proposed by Fauconnier and Turner (The Way
We Think, 2002).
Furthermore, cognitive semiotics, my field of specialization, is, in and
of itself, an interdisciplinary field of research. Setting itself apart from the
more commonly known cultural strands of semiotics, cognitive semiotics
encompasses a host of different disciplines providing an opportunity for
studying the mind and the brain without leaving the Humanities, among
them neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, textual analysis
and the study of (especially linguistic) signs in human exchanges. With its
unique scope, and offering an opportunity for interdisciplinary research,
the Center for Semiotics became a Danish frontrunner in what can be
characterized as a cognitive branch of the humanities. Integrating
semiotics and neuroscience without reducing the study of signs to the
The Communicative Mind
3
study of neural processes, this scientific perspective provides a stimulating
alternative to reductive, empiricist stances to cultural phenomena, on the
one hand, and on the other to relativist positions in the humanities (see
section [4.1]). (On Cognitive Semiotics as a disciplinary foundation for the
research, confer the next section of the Introduction).
One way in which interdisciplinarity is fruitfully engaged across
disciplines, which is characteristic of my approach to language and mind,
is the integration of cognitive linguistics, philosophy and semiotics.
Philosophy is present, though often unacknowledged, in cognitive-linguistic
theories, and semiotics is, after all, the study of what linguistics is
essentially about, namely the study of signs. Through this integration, it
has become possible to find practical implementations of some of the
avowed intentions and motivations among cognitive linguists, for
criticizing contemporary linguistic theories (Chomsky’s generative
grammar being the most prominent example) that hitherto had remained a
mere ideal without practical support. One such goal has been a bridging of
the gap between semantics and pragmatics.
In an attempt to realize this long-standing ambition in CL to close the –
empirically suspect – semantics-pragmatics divide (prevalent, for example,
in generative linguistics), I devise an analytical methodology honoring the
pragmatic factors of enunciation and utterance meaning as central features
of language and as theoretically central concepts in linguistic analysis. The
intensive work on phenomena related to enunciation (the event rather than
product of language use, cf. Chapter 1) can be taken as an elaborate
argument for the timely recognition of the intricate relation between
meaning and communication; if an expression means something it is
because someone (actually or potentially) means something by it. The
adopted empirical approach has bearings on methodology as well. It
influences the choice of data and the way the data is analyzed; I make a
point of stressing the methodological benefits of analyzing units of
meaning in their rhetorical context, and of working primarily with
naturalistic data.
As indicated, the last few decades have witnessed an increasing
awareness of the social dimension of language (McNeill 2005, Tomasello
2006, Zlatev et al. 2008, Smith & Conrey 2009, Gallagher 2009, citing,
among others, Thomson & Varela 2001, et al.)2, moving away from the
analytical, symbol-oriented first wave of the ‘linguistic turn’ toward a
2
See also Language and Social Cognition: Expression of the Social Mind (Pishwa
(ed.) 2009) and Meaning in Mind and Society. A Functional Contribution to the
Social Turn in Cognitive Linguistics (Harder 2010).
4
Introduction
more usage-oriented view, partly inspired by an accumulating corpus of
work on shared conceptual structures underlying language and the
cognitive turn in the Humanities, but also precipitated by linguists and
philosophers in the late 50’s and 60’s taking an interest in what we do with
language (Austin 1962; Benveniste 1966; Searle 1969), thereby
challenging theories of language that aspire to separate pragmatics from
semantics, disregarding the social – and situated – motivations of language
as a means of communication and action. As Gallagher recently wrote in
the Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition (2009), “[...] cognition is
not only pragmatically situated but also always socially situated, not
simply in the sense that the world is populated with others with whom we
communicate but also in the sense that this communication and interaction
shape our cognitive abilities from the very beginning. They push us to
realize that cognition not only is enactive but also elicited by our physical
and social environment; that it not only involves a deeply embodied and
temporally structured action but also is formed in an affective resonance
generated by our surroundings and by others with whom we interact.”
(Gallagher 2009: 47-48, italics added) The “situated” view of human
cognition as originating in embodied interaction with a physical as well as
social environment is a relatively new development in cognitive science,
which requires a thorough linguistic and philosophical investigation so as
to be implemented meaningfully in current scholarly work on semantic
and pragmatic aspects of meaning construction.
Benveniste, a key figure in developing the concept of “enunciation”
(the act of addressing an addressee in the form of an utterance) in
linguistics, dedicated a long section of his 1966 book to what he called the
presence of man in language, directing attention to the subjectivity
inherent in, and entailed by, the fact that language presents itself in the
form of utterances, that is, to the uttering of sentences and the dimension
of situatedness that this circumstance entails.
The common-sensical and yet somewhat theoretically novel view of
language as inherently dialogical and socially conditioned finds support
outside of linguistics as well, appearing as a perspective in neuroscience
and in developmental psychology. The emergence of a “social neuroscience”
is especially noteworthy, particularly the research on “mirror neurons”,
supporting a view of humans as beings fundamentally attuned to
interpersonal interaction and inspiring new hypotheses on the origin of
language, cf. the hypothesis proposed in Gallese (2007), grounding
meaning on the social experience of (observed and even imagined) action.
As Gallagher has suggested, mirror neuron research may even indicate that
the Other is more primary than the Self – contrary to the widely held
The Communicative Mind
5
belief, e.g. in Theory of Mind (i.e. ‘theory theories’), that the Other is
derived from the (primary) Self.
The primacy of intersubjectivity similarly finds support in psychology,
which has a long tradition of observing babies reacting to physical arrays
and giving cognitive interpretations of their reactions to stimuli, but which
has recently turned toward the observation of the development of social
intelligence as well, not just in the form of theory-of-mind experiments but
specifically the intelligence involved in turn-taking interactions, cf.
Trevarthen’s observations (cf. Trevarthen 1994, 1995, 1999) of vocally
and gesturally implemented, markedly rhythmic dialogue-behavior in prelinguistic infants, indicating attunement to communicational causality at a
very early stage, and evidently preceding attunement to physical causality.
“The dynamic patterns of feeling in protoconversation in which the
infant follows and joins in rapidly transforming expressive sequences, give
the clearest evidence that each human mind is innately organized for
intersubjective participation with the interests and feelings of another
human mind.” (Trevarthen 1994) Trevarthen’s observations indicate that
the very uttering of utterances – the rhythmic emission of utterances in
anticipation of rhythmically unfolding turn-taking events – is even
developmentally primary to syntax and semantics, and the conceptualization
and vocal actualization of words needed for actual speech to occur. The
referential function of language appears, in fact, to be secondary to the
enunciational feat of addressing another person: “[...] the syntax of verbal
expression in speech and text is derivative of, or built upon, a
nonreferential process that regulates the changes and exchanges of
motivation and feeling between subjects in all communication where
cooperative awareness is being created.” (ibid.) In this sense, enunciation
is a primitive, more basic even than ‘utterances’: at the core of language is
attunement to others.
The ontogenetic primacy of the preoccupation with enunciation – and
the anticipation of the enunciation of the Other – suggests that enunciation
is not only central to the study of ‘meaning’ but that it is, in fact, more
basic than meaning construction itself. Furthermore, it is food for thought,
from an ontogenetic point of view, that the basic rhythmic turn-taking is
mastered long before the infant starts exploring its physical environment.
Apparently, even babies born two months prematurely can do it. From
birth, the communicative mind spontaneously engages others in
interactional events – an observation challenging the received assessment
of intentionality as somehow derived from physical experience and of
physical experience as being necessarily more “easily understood” than
other forms of experience. Insights such as these contribute to a growing
6
Introduction
body of evidence that the intentionally motivated pragmatic domain of
conversational interaction is in fact not an abstract and “less accessible”
domain in human ontology, as assumed for instance, in the work of Lakoff
and Johnson – as assumed, in fact, in most – if not all? – departments of
Cognitive Science around the world. In Philosophy in the Flesh, to take a
representative example, intentionality is seen as the result of the blending
of two metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson 1999: 216). The assumption is that
all conceptualization is shaped by the infant’s experience of its physical
environment.
The prevalent physicalist consensus on the ontogenesis of embodied
conceptualization, and, more generally, on the phylogenesis of human
cognition, precludes the idea expressed in “Philosophical antecedents to
situated cognition” (Gallagher, supra) that communication and interaction
shape our cognitive abilities from the very beginning, an idea also
expressed in “The Social Context of Cognition” by Smith & Conrey
(2009), which calls attention to the emphasis in social psychology “on the
social context of behavior – the fact that human behavior in general takes
place in, and is adapted to, a rich and complex network of group
memberships, personal relationships, social motives, and the socially
constituted self. This view represents a valuable supplement to the typical
focus on behavior as situated in the physical environment (e.g. Kirsh,
1995).” (Smith & Conrey 2009: 463, italics added) “Cognition almost
invariably occurs in the context of other people: the web of face-to-face
encounters, personal relationships, and social group memberships that
make us who we are. These social entities not only very frequently
constitute the content of our thoughts and feelings but also fundamentally
shape the processes underlying our cognition and behavior as well.”
(Smith & Conrey 2009: 454, italics added)
Similarly, Tomasello’s extensive research on social cognition brings
awareness to the grounding of certain kinds of representations in semiotic
interaction. In Warneken & Tomasello 2009, the authors emphasize
“humans’ unique biological adaptation for social interactions involving
shared intentionality”, arguing that events of cultural exchange motivate
the development of (“dialogic” or “perspectival”) representations necessary
for sharing and distinguishing different perspectives on things – a
mainstay condition for language and thought: “The internalization of
interactions in which cultural artifacts and practices are mastered leads to
some new [i.e. species-unique] forms of dialogic or perspectival cognitive
representations. These new forms of cognitive representations are
fundamentally social in nature, involving both shared and differentiated
perspectives on a single set of entities, so that one and the same entity may
The Communicative Mind
7
be simultaneously construed in different ways, under different descriptions,
for different purposes. Such perspectival cognitive representations are
taken for granted in cognitive science – all theories of knowledge
representation assume them as a matter of course – but in fact there is no
evidence that any other species develops such representations [...]. Our
proposal is that perspectival cognitive representations are an ontogenetic
product resulting from humans’ unique biological adaptation for social
interactions involving shared intentionality, and that other species do not
have such representations because they are not adapted for such social
interactions.” (Warneken & Tomasello 2009: 476, italics added)
Taking as its central point of investigation the overlooked cognitive and
linguistic phenomenon of enunciation, the evidence introduced in this
cognitive-semiotic study of meaning and mind presents a number of
challenges to widely held beliefs. One of these is the belief in bodily and
environmental physicality as the sole source of schematization and
conceptualization. The view of the mind as being also essentially shaped
by its adaptation for social interactions has implications for this and other
related issues, some of which are summarized below:
• The primacy of the physical domain. Physical experience is, in the
empiricist tradition inspiring contemporary cognitive science, more
“concrete”, more “basic” and more “easily accessible” than other
forms of experience – than other ontological or “semantic” domains.
This belief, in turn, is of influence to another contemporary dogma,
which deserves more critical attention than it has so far been afforded3:
• The unidirectionality hypothesis: The belief that meaning flows
unidirectionally from the physical domain to the domains of social
activities and relations, of epistemic activities like reasoning, and of
communicational or metalinguistic activity. The unidirectionality
hypothesis claims that the source domains in metaphor are always
more “concrete” than the target domains, and that, in terms of semantic
domains, the direction always goes from the physical domain to other,
3
Relevant topics that have yet to be put into theoretical perspective include (but
are not limited to): (1) an inventory of ontological (i.e. “semantic”) domains; (2)
the possibility (or, conversely, the impossibility) of transdomain schemas (see also
Walsh 2003), in addition to the directed transfer of structure (for which there is
already ample evidence, cf. e.g. Talmy, Sweetser, Lakoff et al.) from a root
domain; (3) the schematic transfer of structure to the physical domain from other
domains, evident for instance in expressions that construe physical causality in
terms of intentional causality (as in “This machine refuses/does not want to start”).
8
Introduction
more “abstract” domains. Given the proposed “upward movement” of
language from the physical to the “spiritual” (cf. e.g. W. Urban in
Language and Reality, 1939), the abstract concepts of our social,
interactional, emotional, and mental lives can be traced back to an
origin in sensory-motor experiences of our physical environment.
Though counterexamples are sometimes documented – Lakoff &
Turner, for instance, note that “It is common to speak of lines
‘converging’ or ‘meeting,’ as if they were moving” (1989: 142)
(“meeting” is a social concept and does not merely indicate movement)
– they are not documented as counterexamples.
Among the evidence presented here against the conviction that
conceptualization is unidirectional there are examples of metaphors
going from the domain of face-to-face interaction to other, allegedly
more concrete, domains. Manifesting an evident propensity for nonphysical domains to act as source domains in conceptual and
expressive constructions of metaphoric meaning, these observations
“speak against” the unidirectionality hypothesis, according to which all
meaning is rooted in the physical domain.
• Anti-representationalism. For reasons only partly accounted for by the
influence of behaviorist philosophy, the cognitive sciences witness a
divide between representationalist theories, on the one hand, and on the
other, theories that find the concept of (mental) “representation”
philosophically suspect (see e.g. Johnson & Lakoff 2002). Semantics,
in the latter (anti-representationalist) perspective, is not studied as a
feature of communicative attunement, since semantic content is viewed
primarily, or exclusively, as a biological matter concerning brainenvironment interaction. In practice, cognitive analysis thus becomes
equatable with the identification of activity in the brain, e.g. increased
glucose utilization in particular areas or the release or suppression of
dopamine during the performance of specific tasks. Similarly, in the
distributed cognition approach (as in Hutchins 1995), the focus of the
analytic framework is on the observable behavior of cognizers rather
than on the structure of semantic contents in terms of experienced
representations.
• The notion of domains, for instance in relation to metaphor. Some
examples, to illustrate the problem: To investigate the processing of
metaphor in the brain, for instance, one must first decide what counts
as a metaphor, i.e. what data to admit (e.g. when setting up brain
imaging experiments). The pertinent question, then, is how to identify
a metaphor as opposed to other kinds of phenomena. The notion of
domains is central in current theories, but the task of specifying what
The Communicative Mind
9
actually constitutes a domain gets little attention. Experiments taking
an offset in Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson), to take
an example, look for instances of structure being transferred from a
“source domain” to a “target domain”. The conceptual structure
MORE IS UP is said to constitute such an instance. One of the
theoretical problems here, though, is that neither “more” nor “up”
constitute experiential domains; these are schemas – schemas that are
potentially active in all experiential domains (buildings, archery,
argumentation, hunting, cooking, etc.).
Another problem with contemporary theories of metaphor – not just
Conceptual Metaphor Theory, but also Conceptual Integration Theory
(Fauconnier & Turner), Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson) and
also Glucksberg’s attribution model of metaphor as well as Lakoff's
neural theory of metaphor, is that they fail to account for the
emergence of meaning not already there in the “source”, or “vehicle”,
prior to being applied to the target entity. This is evident, for instance,
in the metaphor “This surgeon is a butcher”, since nothing in the
experiential domain of butchery warrants an attribution of the surgeon
as having acted ethically indefensibly or of being incompetent. This is
one of the issues addressed in sections [3.1.2] and [3.1.3] which
identify some of the problems in contemporary theories of metaphor
and offer solutions.
In Mental Space Theory (Fauconnier 1994, 1997), spaces are
intermittently referred to as “domains”. It is less than clear, though,
what the notion of “domains” is actually meant to encompass – both
when applied to mental space theory and in cognitive linguistics
generally. Aside from a finite number of domains of phenomenal
reality (ontological domains, aka ‘semantic domains’; socio-physical,
epistemic and speech-act domains in Sweetser 1990) and a non-finite
number of “experiential domains” (e.g. constituting source and target
domains in conceptual metaphor), Fauconnier adds two further uses:
“Mental spaces are the domains that discourse builds up [...]”
(Fauconnier 1997: 34), and spaces, he writes, are associated with a
certain “domain”: they may be Time spaces, Space spaces, Domain
spaces, etc. (Let us assume that the domains in “Domain spaces” are
experiential domains.) We thus end up with the somewhat confusing
insight that there are (semantic) domains within which there are
(experiential) domains feeding domains (read: mental spaces)
associated with different domains (types of spaces, e.g. “hypotheticals”
or “beliefs”). Add to this the identification of schemas as “domains”
and we are up to five different senses, cf. Lakoff’s classification of
10
Introduction
abstract, image-schematic structures as experiential domains.
Accordingly, there is a domain of paths, a domain of barriers, a domain
of bounded regions, etc. If all senses are employed at once, we thus get
domains specifying domains structured by domains and containing
content from specific domains grounded in domains. As demonstrated
in the discussion of “mental spaces” in Chapter 3, terminological
vagueness is likely to betray deeper issues.
Some discussions relate specifically to aspects of cognitive linguistics.
Some of the topics addressed concern theoretical issues that have not been
scrutinized before:
• Problems in the way syntax is approached in cognitive linguistics, e.g.
with regard to ‘form’ vs. ‘function’ and to syntactic dependency. See
section [2.1] on “fictive interaction” in grammar, and section [3.2.1.2]:
an interdisciplinary critique drawing on cognitive, functional,
stemmatic and generative syntactic frameworks of the “caused-motion
construction”.
• Semantic construal and “fictive motion”. Section [2.2]: a critical
discussion of the notion of “fictivity” employed in CL.
• Conceptual Integration Theory – its scope and limitations. CIT is
stipulated to account not only for complex creative inventions of the
imagination but for a host of phenomena at lower levels of
consciousness, such as perception, object permanence, and the
neurobiological effects constituting experiences of pain. These effects
include for instance phantom-limb phenomena, which are likewise
attributed to “conceptual blending”. All these phenomena, from basic
perception, to integration of perception and memory, to advanced
cultural endeavors like ritual behavior and commercial advertisement
are hypothesized to rely on the same basic mental operation. In
Chapters 1, 2 & 3, I raise the question of whether a unified model of
mental space integration can accurately depict an array of phenomena
as diverse as the founders theorize is the case and identify a host of
inherent problems. Key theoretical notions are taken for granted, in
CIT, without arguments for or against their aptness in individual cases,
and certain terms are applied so widely that a firm grasp of their
meaning is precluded. This is true even of the notion of “conceptual
integration” – the defining phenomenon, hypothesized to constitute “a
general cognitive operation”. Some problem areas:
“Mental spaces”. The expansive drift from studying semantic
sense-making, accessible to conscious awareness, to the
The Communicative Mind
inclusion of visual processing and aspects of cognition
concerning the construction of (non-intentional) representations
of the environment, makes certain imminent inquiries all the
more relevant: What is the nature of the various forms of
integration we can observe, and what are the means of
observation? Are all forms of integration in human cognition
best described as effects of the “blending of mental spaces”?
What does it mean for a space to be “mental”, and what
constitutes such a “space”?
It seems that incorporating insights from research outside
the field of linguistics – not least gestalt- and neuropsychology
– would be necessary in order to arrive at any useful definitions.
Also it would be beneficial to take into account the scientific
value of combining empirical evidence and philosophy, making
explicit the hypothesized architecture of consciousness assumed
as a basis for formulating these hypotheses of cognitive
processing (and hence for the methodology employed). In its
current use, the concept of “mental spaces” lacks theory-internal
consistency as well as neural and psychological plausibility.
The blending diagrams. In Chapters 2 & 3, I question the
proposed typology and the structure of the proposed network:
e.g. the cognitive plausibility of the proposal that conceptual
integrations can have an infinity of inputs.
The treatment of “identity” (its various senses are not
differentiated). The blending mechanisms are believed to be
responsible not only for categorization but also for prerequisites
of categorization, among them: time, identity and causality (cf.
Fauconnier & Turner 2002). I argue against this belief; it is
illogical, for instance, that blending be the origin of the
perception of numerical identity.
Perception. Blending is described in CIT as a causal factor in
the perception of objects. I argue that blending is not involved
in processes of perception. Part of the argument is based on
Pöppel’s theory of how time (and, according to the argument
made here, identity) is internally constructed in the brain, and
how the automatic and compulsory binding mechanisms
involved in basic temporal integration in turn affect cognition
and behavior. With his insights on human temporal processing,
11
12
Introduction
Pöppel offers an experimentally based theoretical challenge to a
number of hypotheses within CIT, including, not least, the view
of time as an emergent product of conceptual blending, and
hence of imaginative space building as being prior to the
construction of time and object permanence (cf. 3.2.1.3.2:
‘Temporal differentiation of integration levels’). If Pöppel is
correct in assuming, in accord with the suggestion that “brain
rhythms are causally implicated in cognitive functions” (cf.
Thut & Miniussi 2009), that cognitive processes cannot be
studied without their temporal dynamics, it seems a logical step
for theories of cognitive processing to take the temporal
dynamics of the studied phenomena into account. Pöppel’s
theory is arguably at odds with some of the tenets of CIT,
speaking against the hypothesis that all mental phenomena,
including sensory as well as semantic event integration,
“proceed from the same cognitive ability and lie on a common
continuum” (Fauconnier & Turner 2002: 185), and showing
that, rather than being a product of blending, time is fundamental
to cognitive processing.
Blending/binding. Perceptual integration is normally described
via a binding schema, cf. the notion of perceptual binding.
Integration that occurs at the perceptual level of consciousness
involves contours, chromatic qualities and other primitives that
are “bound” to each other in the process and sent off as
integrated wholes, so that when we perceive an entity we
perceive all the properties at once. Fauconnier and Turner’s
suggestion that this final, integrated result be identified as a
conceptual blend is, I claim, unsupported and makes the posing
of this methodological question highly relevant: If the neural
binding involved in the construction of e.g. a display of visible
objects is inaccessible to consciousness, as is manifestly the
case (no amount of concentration will allow us to experience
our own brains), how can the cognitive semanticist identify it
and diagram the process (a methodology based on introspection)?
In cognitive linguistics, we find, on the one hand, descriptions
of conscious and unconscious mental activity, and on the other,
with an offset in these, physical and chemical events to which
the analyst has no introspective access but which are observed
indirectly, by the use of technological probes, and interpreted as
indicative of conceptual activity. The authors do not commit to
The Communicative Mind
13
one or the other of these levels of description, the reason being,
I propose, that blending is conceived of as transcending them
([3.2.1.3.1]: ‘Identity and causality: Welcome to the “bubble
chamber”’).
Syntax. I question the view of blending as the origin of
grammatical constructions and that blending is even necessarily
useful to the description of syntactic structure. The idea of
mental spaces does not appear to add anything, neither in terms
of providing theoretical motivation for the fact that syntactic
constructions express semantic structure (i.e. for the construction
itself), nor in terms of explaining how syntactic structures may
fit particular experiences. There is no obvious reason why
structural mappings, for instance in the case of caused-motion
sentences, could not be diagrammed, and importantly, why they
should not in fact occur, without being bounded by mental
spaces. It is not clear how – or if – mental spaces are actually
involved in syntactic integration processes.
Despite the stated ambition in Fauconnier & Turner 2002, the theory, as it
stands, provides no avenues for testing either individual analyses of
phenomena, nor the blending-binding hypothesis, nor the claim that
blending is a general and ubiquitous feature of cognition (i.e. the “general
mechanism” hypothesis: that blending be “fundamental to all activities of
the human mind [...]”. My contribution, therefore, has been a critique of
the theory based on what can be assumed to be agreed-on scientific
principles, and some constructive solutions to the problems identified –
based on the same examples as well as additional examples of the
cognitive processing of linguistic meaning in various written and spoken
genres of discourse. Among the results are a new typology of integrations
and an analytic framework with a less inclusive scope: a semiotic theory of
conceptual integration.
The extensive analyses throughout the book of empirical utterances in all
kinds of discourse – including fiction (Ch. 4) and the deliberately nonnatural language use of metrical verse (Ch. 5) – intimate an overall view of
the meaning-making mind as relying to a considerable degree on the
dynamics of imagination, and shows that the fundamentally dynamic
nature of language, evident in various syntactic and semantic traits, is
motivated by the enunciating conceptualizer’s anticipatory monitoring of
the hearer’s attention, by a pronounced predisposition for framing of states
14
Introduction
of affairs in terms of forces, and, crucially, by the inherently temporal
aspect of conceptual processing.
A central and noteworthy characteristic of many of the linguistic
phenomena recorded here is the circumstance that they are, in effect,
referential only in an indirect manner (cf. Ch. 2, Ch. 3, Ch. 4), suggesting
that a philosophy of language aiming towards naturalistic realism will
need to acknowledge the pervasiveness of non-actuality in representation.
The direction of the overall project, and the scientific perspective
manifesting itself in theoretical developments in each chapter and in novel
angles from which to approach and critique existing theories, are – it is
important to notice – made possible precisely by combining ideas across
disciplinary territories, that is, by thinking up an interdisciplinary
approach.
Cognitive Semiotics
At the university I went to in the 1990’s, there was no linguistics
department and no cognitive science in the Humanities. When I came
across Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff & Johnson 1980), Women, Fire, and
Dangerous Things (Lakoff 1987), and Reading Minds (Turner 1991),
bearing the subtitle “The Study of English in the Age of Cognitive
Science”, it opened up a whole new set of avenues. Having grown
increasingly dissatisfied with the prospects of analytic philosophy of
language and with the various theoretical manifestations of relativism I
encountered in the human sciences, reading these books permanently
changed my curriculum. I was elated to discover that my lifelong interest
in language and cognition was now, in fact, the central concern in a
burgeoning field of research, and decided to seek out stimulating input
wherever I could find it. While finishing my MA in Philosophy and
English4, I began making excursions off campus, seeking out talks and
4
At Roskilde University (RUC), I studied English phonology, phonetics and
functional grammar, and following a year of graduate studies in Linguistics and
Comparative Literature as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Washington, I
completed my MA in Philosophy and English at RUC, specializing in syntax,
semantics and textual analysis. After obtaining my degree, and thanks to Gilles
Fauconnier who was kind enough to invite me, I spent a year working on the
diagrammatical modeling of the semantics of non-literal language use at University
of California (San Diego) as a guest researcher in the Department of Cognitive
Science (2001-2002). Benefiting from the rich teaching and research environment
at UCSD, I had the good fortune to attend lectures by Liz Bates, V. S.
Ramachandran and others, participating in research meetings and seminars, and
The Communicative Mind
15
reading material on topics in cognitive studies. I followed lectures at the
University of Copenhagen (e.g. Frederik Stjernfelt on metaphor theory and
Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen on sign language), and started making
frequent trips to the Center for Semiotics (CfS) at Aarhus University to
participate in seminars and research meetings. Here I came upon an
academic environment that set itself apart in many ways. It was an
institution with a different kind of agenda, and instead of scripted lectures,
they offered seminars: interactive “sessions” of variable duration that,
unlike regular courses, were attended by every researcher and student
present at the Center, sometimes even by administrative staff. This
alternative learning environment fostered a daring and inventive, rather
than primarily receptive, attitude in participants, which was enlightening
and, at times, electrifying. It seemed each assembly potentially carried the
promise of new discoveries. In an atmosphere at once relaxed and intense,
scholars from sundry disciplines congregated to learn from each other and
get feedback on recent ideas. Everyone was encouraged to pitch in during
the – often protracted – sessions that seemed genuinely motivated by the
common goal of finding things out. This was how I had originally
envisioned a university: as an institution with joint discovery as a primary
objective. Buzzing with activity, the Center fostered an influx of “tourists”
(as was the amicable term in the local vernacular – designating people
with no formal affiliation to the institution) and of guest researchers from
departments near and far (among them visiting research fellows Rick
Grush and Tim Rohrer), whom the Center hosted, to the apparent benefit
both of collective and individual intellectual progress. My engagement in
the CfS community, from the mid-1990’s to the mid-2000’s, first as an
intellectual tourist and later as a researcher and teacher, confirmed my
belief in scientific success as being fundamentally dependent on the
establishment of a research community.
Delving deeper into cognitive linguistics and dynamic semiotics (to
echo the AU motto)5, I had the pleasure of reaping inspiration from a wide
range of scholars, including Seana Coulson, Terrence Deacon, Shaun
Gallagher, Rick Grush, Karen van Hoek, Mark Johnson, Ernst Pöppel,
Colwyn Trevarthen and other inspiring researchers visiting the Center, as
well as a group of “regulars” who seemed equally excited to be there.
I moved to Aarhus in the fall 2002 after a first year of research at
UCSD (the latter semester funded by a Ph.D. stipend from the Faculty of
following courses by Ron Langacker, Gilles Fauconnier, Seana Coulson and Ed
Hutchins.
5
Solidum petit in profundis.
16
Introduction
Humanities received primo 2002). In the years leading up to the move,
during the period from early 1996 to the turn of the century, I attended a
wide range of symposia and guest lectures at CfS. Of particular interest to
me were: linguist Prof. Eve Sweetser on Mental Spaces, (May 96, Oct.
98); Winter symposium on Mental Spaces and the Structures of Meaning
(Jan. 97); cognitive literary scholar Prof. Mark Turner: A Mechanism of
Creativity (May 97), Principles of Conceptual Blending (May 97) and a 3day seminar: Varieties of Conceptual Projection (June 97); philosopher
Rick Grush: Seminar on Neurocognitive Grammars (spring 98); philosopher
Tim Rohrer: Seminar on Conceptual Metaphor, Conceptual Blending and
the Embodiment Hypothesis (fall 98); linguist Prof. Leonard Talmy:
Relating Language to other Cognitive Systems and How Language
Structures Concepts (Sep. 98); linguists Karen van Hoek & Seana
Coulson: Discourse and Cognition (Dec. 98); Mark Turner: Evolution,
Brains, Symbols, and Descent of Meaning, (...) Figures, Schemas, and
Constructions, and Concepts, Mental Operations, and Expression (May
99); Tim Rohrer: Seminar on Conceptual Metaphor (spring 99);
philosopher Prof. Shaun Gallagher: Motor and Communicative Theories of
Gesture (Sep. 99); cognitive rhetorician Todd Oakley: Toward a Grammar
of Attention (Nov. 99); neuropsychologist Prof. Ernst Pöppel: A
Hierarchical Model of Temporal Perception (Nov. 99).
At the turn of the millennium I was busy finishing a thesis in cognitive
semantics and literary studies, but continued to make occasional
appearances at the Aarhus center. The high level of activity persisted.6 In
6
Up until the fall 2002, there were, in addition to the regular seminars, supplementary
seminars on the Dynamics of Meaning Construction by visiting professor Gilles
Fauconnier (Nov. 00); lectures in 2001 by Wolfgang Wildgen (Universität Bremen),
Jean Petitot (EHESS), Larry Zbikowski (University of Chicago), Mark Turner
(University of Maryland), Todd Oakley (Case Western Reserve University),
Joshua Sabih (AU), Mikkel Holm Sørensen (IT Højskolen), Jesper Sørensen
(SDU), Ole Thyssen (HH), Mikkel Bogh (University of Copenhagen), Bernard
Baars (The Neurosciences Institute, San Diego), Frederik Stjernfelt (University of
Copenhagen); symposium on A Cognitive Approach to Marketing Semiotics
(Henrik Dresbøll); seminars on Conscious Access Models of Cognitive Function
by Prof. Bernard Baars (May 02); lectures in 2002 by Frederik Stjernfelt, Michael
Chandler (University of British Columbia), Chris Sinha (SDU), Jesper Sørensen,
Helle Munkholm Davidsen (SDU), Wolfgang Wildgen, Jesper Mogensen (University
of Copenhagen), Anders Hougaard (SDU); Thomas Ramsøy (Lions Kollegiet,
Cph.), Shaun Gallagher (Canisius College, NY), Frieder Nake (Universität
Bremen), Michael May (Dansk Maritim Institut, Cph.), Dan Zahavi (University of
Copenhagen), Colwyn Trevarthen (University of Edinburgh), and Maxine SheetsJohnstone (Univerity of Oregon).
The Communicative Mind
17
2000, the Center, which started out as an educational research seminar in
1989, had its proposal of establishing an MA program in Cognitive
Semiotics approved, and in 2001 students started enrollment in the new
program (beforehand students had the one option of enrolling at the BA
level). The research program bore the title General and Dynamic
Semiotics and was founded on a contract (1993-1998) between the Danish
National Research Foundation and the Center for Semiotic Research (AU).
The affiliated research group consisted of its founder, P. Aa. Brandt, and
Peer F. Bundgaard, Anne Marie Dinesen, Lene Fogsgaard, Morten Lind,
Steffen Nordahl Lund, Arne Thing Mortensen (my former MA supervisor
in the Department of Philosophy at RUC), Helle S. Poulsen, Lone S.
Rasmussen, Bent Rosenbaum, Chris Sinha and Svend Østergaard.
On the initiative of P. Aa. Brandt – the research director – and
benefiting, to a substantial degree, from the organizational talents of Tina
Friis (functioning as the CfS secretary), as well as the assistance of Jens
Peter Tofte (functioning as financial manager and graphic designer), the
Center organized a number of activities: conferences, research training,
international collaborative undertakings, publications, research meetings
and seminars (in semio-linguistics, general semiotics, psycho-semiotics,
techno-semiotics, aesthetics, narratology, philosophy and theo-semiotics),
as well as annual winter symposia and annual summer seminars in Italy –
in collaboration with faculty at the University of Urbino.7 Every year a
busful of semioticians headed south in the campus van, and yet more by
trains, planes and automobiles, off to enjoy days of stimulating lectures
and nightly gatherings at the central piazza bar near the Duke’s palace.
Semiotics may be gratifying in and of itself, but doing semiotics in a
majestic renaissance town endowed with culture and wildlife is better yet:
“a palace that instead of rising within a city’s walls contains within its own
walls a city can only be Urbino” (Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino).
Historically, cognitive semiotics grew out of dynamic semiotics (cf.
the title of the aforementioned research program). These branches of
semiotics stand in contrast, for example, to cultural semiotics (as is
commonly practiced for instance in the US). Dynamic semiotics is based
on ideas developed in mathematics (cf. René Thom’s concept of a
“catastophe” as a transition from one state to another) and is oriented
toward comprehension of universal structures in cognition in terms of
7
In later years, summer seminars were held on the island of Bornholm, Denmark:
a 2003 PhD summer symposium on ‘Perspectives on Language and Text in
Cognitive Semantics’ with Eve Sweetser, and, in 2004, one on ‘Perspectives on
Poetics and Textual Analysis in Cognitive Semiotics’ with Mark Turner,
Christopher Collins and Monica González.
18
Introduction
forces acting on forms. As stated in the original program presentation,
dynamic semiotics is a “recently developed paradigm in semiotic
modelling, mainly built on Catastrophe Theory – a mathematical means of
grasping forms as stable structures of morphogenesis. Intelligible states,
events, acts, processes and beings in general, are understood formally in
terms of force topologies. Form is dynamically represented as based on
conflicts opposing forces. The material substratum of these forces is
unimportant, whereas the dynamics of their local configuration determines
the emergent forms that constitute the intelligible phenomenon.”
Dynamicity, in its different senses, concerns the structural content in
phenomenal experience and is the central issue in Svend Østergaard’s
book on “cognition and catastrophes” (the specifying subtitle, in English
translation, is studies in dynamic semiotics), see Østergaard (1998). One
sense is temporal, cf. Langacker’s observation that there is temporality in
conceptual construal. Dynamicity may also refer to conceptual animation,
as in Talmy’s “cognitive dynamism” (as compared with cognitive
staticism).8 A third aspect of dynamicity has to do with the dynamics of
forces (as compared with figural imagery). Force dynamics is described in
Talmy (1995) as “a system of concepts built into the semantic structure of
language and seemingly other cognitive systems, in which a body can have
an intrinsic tendency toward rest or toward motion, another body can
oppose that tendency, the first body can resist that opposition, the other
body can overcome that resistance, where a stronger object can block a
weaker one or force it to move, and where a weaker object can hinder or
act in vain on a stronger one.” Briefly put, it is “the general and languagebased conceptual system pertaining to force exertion, opposition,
resistance, and overcoming”, cf. Talmy (1991).
Sharing Talmy’s interest in “narrative structure in a cognitive
framework”, Østergaard emphasizes the importance of how we conceptualize
scenarios and represent them linguistically. The inherent dynamics in the
world, according to the view presented in his 1998 book, determines, or in
a weaker sense, motivates, the conceptual structures by means of which
the cognitive agent may refer to the world. Dynamic structure emerges out
of the interaction between the neurobiological processes in the cognitive
individual and the physical processes in the environment. The emergent
structures are neither neurobiological nor physical, but are, as Østergaard
points out, phenomenological. Østergaard therefore speaks of an emergent
phenomenology.
8
Cf. Talmy 2000, Vol. I, p. 171.
The Communicative Mind
19
There are two levels of reality: the morphology (form) of experience,
characterized as phenomenological structure, correlated to an external
phenomenology inherent in situations. Østergaard describes the correlation
of the two levels as a self-reinforcing feedback relation between
information from pheno-physics, on the one hand, and projection from
cognition, on the other (the cognitive system’s construction of e.g. virtual
viewpoints in the perception of objects). There is thus a non-arbitrary
relation between the external world and mental constructions. In
phenomenological terms, the physical environment appears as a result of
the convergence between consciousness and transcendent reality (i.e.
reality transcending processes of cognition, cf. Husserl). Geometrical,
topological and dynamic structure is inherent to the phenomenological as
well as the physical world, and these (e.g. topological) structures are
identical to the information that generates the cognitive schemas through
perception.
The term pheno-physics (borrowed from P. Aa. Brandt) refers to an
aspect of phenomenal reality: the pheno-physical level contains a ‘physics’
which is objective and mathematically representable, as is classical
physics, but unlike microphysics (“geno-physics”) it is phenomenologically
accessible. The conceptual understanding of forces and dynamic processes
that is expressed linguistically is not identical to a (e.g. Newtonian)
physical conceptualization of the same phenomena. The cognitive processes
“transgenerate” the topological information before the information is
projected onto the phenomenological world. The phenomenological
viewpoint presented implies a form of ontological realism that emphasizes
the structural stability of natural and conceptual processes. This is of
significance to the way in which agents are able to represent entities and
events – an ability which, Østergaard explains, is facilitated cognitively by
the organizational capability of (neurally implemented) cognitive schemas:
configurations in the mental representation of the speaker that are
independent of the figural content of temporal and spatial forms. Cognitive
schemas are abstract representations of dynamic processes. Their
phenomenal form is independent of the physical nature of the dynamics;
they are non-figural and non-specific and in this sense abstract.
Note that this particular understanding of schemas is different from
other uses, e.g. “schema” in the sense of physiological, procedural
knowledge or in the sense of a situational script (cf. Fillmore) which is
figural and more specific (e.g. a “restaurant script” detailing probable
events inherent in a type of situation). The schematic form is the form by
which the cognitive system generates stable representations of temporal
and spatial processes, and other sorts of processes. The schemas that
20
Introduction
organize the conceptual level of language are likely to be rooted in the
physical domain, though have other sources as well, most prominently
enunciation, communication, and abstract social processes – perhaps
intentional behavior as such. An example mentioned is the speaker’s
intention to mark a viewpoint in relation to the content of the expression
(presumably for epistemic or emotive purposes). Conceptual constructions
are thus also determined by communicative strategies, including, for
example, the subjective agendas motivating the foregrounding or
backgrounding of content, and the choice of viewpoint a speaker applies to
a state of affairs – a viewpoint that can be construed independently of the
structural properties of the state of affairs considered in and of itself.
Østergaard also mentions deictic constructions, which have to be
interpreted in relation to a speaker’s viewpoint.
If two different processes can be represented by the same verbal unit, it
indicates that they are structurally stable at the phenomenological level,
such that they may be grasped (epistemically speaking) by application of
the same structurally stable form.
The dynamic schemas do not represent physical processes in physical
space but cognitive structures employed to stabilize and represent dynamic
processes independently of their ontological form. The discernment and
diagrammatic explication of these schemas is a central task in dynamic
semiotics. Inquiries, naturally, set in at the level of manifestation, and are
consequently instigated by examination of linguistic and narrative
constructions of dynamic event sequences in various (not least literary)
types of text.
Aside from the notion of schemas, the notion of scenarios is of
importance. The cognizer selects a framing for some aspect of phenomenal
reality and represents it (e.g. linguistically) as a dynamic whole. As a
dynamic whole, a scenario involves some form of (latent or realized)
agency.
To be present means for a cognitive agent to be present in a scenario.
One scenario can be the background of another; a scenario is typically
understood in relation to another prior, future or hypothetical scenario,
which influences perceived saliences, and the semantic pregnances
invested therein, and constrains agency. Scenarios are endowed with
temporal depth and have intrinsic narrative potential. The cognitive agent
must engage in phenomenological analysis of a given dynamic scenario in
order to localize the parameters, i.e. the variables that can be causes of
change – intentional agents, physical forces etc. – and he must have a
mental representation of the relation between parameters and represent
possible salient changes that the parameters can cause.
The Communicative Mind
21
Østergaard’s exposition on the morphodynamics of human experience
(see also the work of René Thom and Per Aage Brandt, Jean Petitot,
Wolfgang Wildgen et al.) ultimately conveys an evolutionary perspective
on language structure (as being dependent on the condition that a
biological individual acts in relation to other individuals in a social
environment; semantics and pragmatics are hence seen as two sides of the
same coin) and on conceptualization: certain aspects of the structure of the
(natural as well as cultural) content world have been selected for (cf. the
emergence of schemas) in order to yield behavioral patterns that optimize
the conditions for survival.
The schematics of cognition continues to be a central concern in what
has become known as Cognitive Semiotics. The term ‘cognitive semiotics’
was coined by E. Holenstein (cf. the 1992 interview republished in
Kognitiv Semiotik 2003) and became the descriptive header of a research
and seminar program at the Center for Semiotics in the late 1990’s. It was
adopted by P. Aa. Brandt during the Roman Jakobson conference in
Copenhagen in 1996, and came to stand for a branch of semiotics
integrating European philosophy, semiotics, and American cognitive
science, from neuroscience to semantics (cf. Brandt 2003: “Toward a
Cognitive Semiotics”).9
Cognitive semiotics being a relatively novel development, it may not
be familiar to all, and a rudimentary characterization might be useful as a
preliminary measure to embarking on the following chapters. As with
other categories, cognitive semiotics is radially structured and there may
be variations concerning individual traits (analogously, “birds can fly” is
usually a true statement – but then there is the penguin...). As stated in the
“Cognitive Semiotics” (CS) entry in the Semiotics Encyclopedia Online10,
9
Aside from a growing interest in neuroscientific research, one could also observe
an increased occupation with mental space theory and its apparent utility e.g. in
linguistics (Sweetser et al.) and literary studies (Turner, Oakley). The
aforementioned article by P. Aa. Brandt (published in 2003) was, tellingly,
succeeded by an article by Fauconnier & Turner called “Conceptual Blending”,
and the seeds of the work on blending presented in my dissertation (Brandt 2010)
were sown in seminar sessions at the Center where practical analysis of concrete
examples (paintings, texts, etc.) made it evident that further theoretical
development was required. At the end of Østergaard’s 1998 book (supra) he poses
the question of how to link up morphodynamic content and a cognizer’s viewpoint,
which he suggests could be related to mental space and blending theory. I suppose
this idea is to some extent realized in the present research project, though it is by
no means exhausted by these efforts.
10
Semioticon.com [accessed 2012].
22
Introduction
“one can make the generalization that CS studies meaning on all levels –
from perception to language, along with the various forms of ‘external’,
cultural representations (theatre, music, pictures, film, etc.) – primarily as
dynamic processes rather than static products. Though the latter can be a
convenient descriptive shorthand (e.g., of the ‘lexicon’ of a language, or
the ‘repertoire’ of gestures in a community), nearly all CS scholars have
made the point that viewing meaning in purely static, structural terms is
insufficient for understanding the essentially relational, subject-relative,
and (often) interpretive nature of semiosis. Unsurprisingly, various
formulations have been used to capture the dynamic nature of meaning:
sense-making (Thompson), meaning construction (Oakley), languaging
(Maturana), etc.” The following five characteristics are elaborated in the
encyclopedic entry: “productive combination of theory and empirical
research, methodological triangulation (including first-person methods),
influence of phenomenology, dynamism of meaning, and transdisciplinarity.”
Cognitive Semiotics (henceforth CS) is an emerging interdisciplinary
matrix of (sub-parts of) disciplines and methods, focused on the
multifaceted phenomenon of meaning. It is characterized by the ambition
of “...integrating methods and theories developed in the disciplines of
cognitive science with methods and theories developed in semiotics and
the humanities, with the ultimate aim of providing new insights into the
realm of human signification and its manifestation in cultural practices”, as
stated on the home site of the journal Cognitive Semiotics:
Multidisciplinary Journal on Meaning and Mind [cognitivesemiotics.com
11
]. This admittedly already broad definition could be further extended to
include investigations of “non-human signification”. As shown below
[ibid.], while CS practitioners indeed focus on what is specific about
human forms of meaning-making, there is widespread agreement that this
can only be properly understood in a comparative and evolutionary
framework. / Thus understood, CS cuts through and stretches across
11
The journal Cognitive Semiotics: Multidisciplinary Journal on Meaning and
Mind was founded at Aarhus University in 2005 and with funding from Case
Western Reserve University and the support of Per Aage Brandt, Todd Oakley
(Department of Cognitive Science, CWRU) and Peter Lang Verlag was developed
into an international, peer-reviewed journal with an extended editorial board (the
editorial manager at the time, Jes Vang Poulsen, and I remained on board as coeditors). Since the publication of its inaugural issue on “Agency” (2007), the
journal has published a number of themed issues on topics such as “Consciousness
& Semiosis”, “Cognitive Poetics”, and “Semiotics as a Cognitive Science”, and on
the initiative of its new editorial board (2012) will renew itself as The Journal of
Cognitive Semiotics, a biannual publication dedicated to research in cognitive
science, semiotics and beyond.